THE BOSS, THE BARRACUDA & MAYBERRY

Americans love their labels. You know, captioning people so you don't have to really understand them. Comes with our sound-bite mentality. And yet, sometimes we get it right. Like The Boss and The Barracuda...!

Both Springsteen and Palin are creatures of their own conscious making. Both wear jeans, turn on crowds, and represent low & mid Americana. The difference is, one has a talent for providing lets-all-get-together entertainment; the other, a penchant for lets-all-argue trouble. The Boss gives voice to the crowd's best instincts (camaraderie); the Barracuda to some of their baser instincts (confrontation).

I'm not sure, but I don't think The Boss wants to be president. I suspect the Barracuda would either love to be or at least become the media counter-force to The Oprah. Springsteen seems to find his psychic energy from the sights and sounds of his blue-collar Jersey roots; Palin from the energy she was accidentally bequeathed in last year's presidential campaign, a campaign she now denounces for misusing that energy.

Intentionally or not, The Boss personifies yesterday-and-tomorrow-America all in one throaty explosion of high-decibel sound. He is yesterday's farmers and toilers; at the same time, he is tomorrow's urbanized, multi-racial society. He is the best of yesterday's Currie & Ives Americana while he is also the best of tomorrow's harder-edged nation. However you look and hear him, he can make you feel proud of what we were at the same time excited about who we can yet become.

Sarah Palin is far more intentional. One has to assume she never dreamed such instant celebrity, but now that it's hers, there are those advising her to run with it for all it's worth (after all, celebrity in this culture collapses even faster than it's created). And so, Ms Palin taps into some of her deep-seated political passions that we all can share to one degree or another. Namely, that purer America-that-was which President Reagan also saw and sold. I mean, who can't love the small town innocence and goodness of the America Norman Rockwell and Thomas Kincaide paint for us...?

But here's where that "trouble" comes in with the Palin Doctrine. While Springsteen's crowds are black and white and brown, Palin's are definitely all white. You know -- the way America was, is and always was meant to be! I'm white. so I hear her. Loud and clear. But the US Census Bureau speaks still louder. By 2050, America's whites will be in the minority. Which suggests we've got about 40 year to learn how to live and sing and hunt together somewhere beyond the nostalgic borders of Mayberry, USA....